Nerve.com reviews The Restaurant: The secret S&M subtext
http://www.nervemag.com/screeningroom/tv/restaurant/
A snippet:
Quote:
The star of The Restaurant is remarkably crass, a hard, indifferent dom figure, all too comfortable exercising control. It’s as if he’s attracted to something eager and unformed in the waiters — something of himself he sees in them, first-generation Italian-American Queens kid that he is — and then turns on them for the same elements. Fascinatingly, the show portrays this nasty component of restaurant life, one that’s inevitably eroticized. The power differential between boss and wait staff is great, and waiters, like servants, arouse fantasies about dutifulness and accommodation.
